vaultofthearchonfandomcom-20200214-history
104276-why-do-we-have-unintended-new-bugs-and-issues-after-every-patch
Page 1, Page 2 Content ---- ---- Have you ever seen the live stream? 3 casuals sit infront of a pc, reading twitter posts and click with their mouse randomly through the screen, making fun and start laughing when they "die" or when things don't work as intended. That's how the testing here at carbine works. I couldn't even tell you if something is broken or not because our NA realm keeps dc'ing every 30 minutes since the patch was released. So I guess we are waiting till midnight to see if that finally gets fixed. | |} ---- ---- I haven't released a software that as complicated as an mmo too @Kestriel, however I did release many complex softwares (in their own segment). I do understand it is impossible to release without bugs, but look at the examples I gave please, do you seriously think any of those examples couldn't have been realized during a simple 'features' test? Honestly? Look at quest logs bug for example, how can it not be seen before going live? And no, I'm not really skilled in game development, if they hired me they'd go bankrupt before the next content drop :p | |} ---- they COULD have been. truth is I get that all the time from our developers, test this, this is ALL we touched, it wont affect anything else. QA ONLY tests what they touched. code, especially in an mmo touches more than what they added. and there is no possible way their QA touches all parts of the game for a content update. no.. possible...way. they unfortunately trust the coders when they say they didnt touch it. they shouldnt. but they need to to stay on budget. agaion, as I have said elsewhere, the coders did it fast instead of doing it right, and things break in live that "they never touched" for a reason | |} ---- I couldn't agree more on this. This actually narrows down the possible reasons in my head. It is either the lack of good quality coders -a.k.a they don't test their own code - or they are under pressure on marketing side and rushing development to keep up with promised non ideal deadlines. All in all, it saddens me to see this happen. I never see such 'simple' (nothing is simple in sytems development but couldn't find a proper word without being disrespectful) bugs go live in, say, WoW's content patches. | |} ---- How many source code branches does your team work in (not meant as a snarky tone, just genuinely curious)? At any given time our code environments look like the following: Dev (Drop 7), Dev (Drop 6), Dev (Drop 5) | Staging (Drop 4), PTR (Drop 3), Live (Drop 2) Our Dev environments run CI (continuous integration) with hundreds of our devs checking in work on a daily basis. For shipping environments, we have some proprietary tech we use for integrations and code promotions (our Build team rocks and they work really hard). Branches iterate on a monthly basis (imagine a conveyor belt moving from left to right.) We also have a fairly aggressive monthly Live release cycle which can be seen as follows: 1 Content Drop We iterate our branch numbers when this occurs and this represents major changes in our database structures, system overhauls, new features coming online, etc. Typically, large scoped features and high risk changes are deployed with Drops (Sabotage, Blighthaven, The Defile, etc.) Content drops contain literally thousands of changes made by hundreds of developers while the branch resides on our Dev environment 2 - 4 Weekly Patches We iterate build numbers and not branch numbers with these Smaller and manageable changes are deployed (sometimes we get whacky and throw something big in) These only include promoted code (we also have another system we use for fixing things directly on shipping which I can't delve into details on) ~# Hotfixes (unknown number of hotfixes depending on severity of issues) We do not iterate build numbers externally when hotfixes occur Small and targeted fixes for exploits/critical issues occur during hotfixes These only include promoted code (we also have another system we use for fixing things directly on shipping which I can't delve into details on) Here's just a few examples of how something may break: We don't catch something in QA (hey, we're not perfect and we're the first to admit that, but damn do we try hard and are we pretty diligent in what we get. FYI our QA team is really on the ball with a lot of things and they deserve a badge and a hat.) During the build and/or code promotion process to Live a code dependency or integration issue occurs and we break an unforseen system (typically Build/QA catches this) System X comes online and System Y depends on it in such an obscure way that until the code is live in a production environment we don't see the issue (today's crashes are a good example of this, we needed a LOT of players online doing a LOT of different things for the system to stress to the point that causes the break) It's a lot to juggle and hopefully that helps shed some light on things. Cougar also has a good post on patches here: https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/16069-carbine-processes-patch-types/ Cheers Edited August 1, 2014 by Virtue | |} ---- ---- May be a display issue in our UI. One of our UI designers was looking into a bug that sounded related to this earlier today. Cheers | |} ---- Its counting pvp damage the same in instanced as it is in the open world. This is really a big thing to miss wouldn't you agree? | |} ---- Basically, unless you make gaming software, your expectations aren't realistic. Gaming software of this nature, is a completely different animal. Different rules, different level of complexity, and different standards. That doesn't mean they're amateur or incompetent. It means they have deadlines and sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Even if they didn't, bugs would crop up after release, because no matter how much testing you do, a massive number of live concurrent users will create stress and unique cases without even trying. | |} ---- I have in WoW. in every one since launch, but since they ALSO tend to change everything each content launch, people dont usually notice since you are trying to relearn the game each and every time. which is still bad since its a 10 year old platform and still things slip through, they always will due to unintended usage or just sheer numbers of users. what is important, is that they get addressed in a timely fashion, not that the bugs are there. nothing is perfect, all they need to do is step up and fix whats broken. if they dont do that, then feel free to be disrespectful. thats what you need to be sad about, not something put out by imperfect humans | |} ---- ---- ---- I don't think they're rushing to keep up with non-ideal deadlines, they're trying to keep up with player expectations. Which is admirable, but foolhardy; they'll never fix bugs and improve situations fast enough for us. The problem with being an MMORPG game developer at launch is that, if you're listening to the forums, the game was expected to be perfect when it launched, so all the player base expects the fixes will at least be done by the end of the week and the fixes will all be perfect coming out the other end. I think, unfortunately, instead of being intentional hyperbole on most people's part, some of them are actually believing that rhetoric themselves. I'm grateful Carbine's taken player concerns in such considerably large swallows and they're testing as much as they can on their release schedule, but they have to come to Earth and realize that they will never, ever be fast enough to be above scorn and ridicule. Then there are things that happen because the game engine is new and a lot of the tools they are using are new. Take for example the bug that reset everyone's world boss progress in the attunement quests to zero. To know that would happen, the team would either have to intuitively know that it would happen, or they'd have to see it while testing that, if someone was killing world bosses in in-house testing or on the PTR, the fix wiped out the quest. The game's a bit too new to know it intuitively yet (they said the system they tripped is a developer tool that automatically adjusts if they have to change a quest, but it shouldn't have worked there), and nobody on the PTR just happens to be testing that phase of attunement to know that. And finally, of course, bugs in your bug fixes, like bugs everywhere, are just going to happen. That's why WoW routinely gets hotfixes and patches right after content drops, and they have staff on orders of magnitude larger than Carbine, a much more familiar system for them, and a lot more leeway from the fanbase to test. They're some of the best developers on the face of the planet at Blizzard, and it still happens that the touch-ups you apply, no matter how much they're tested, will inevitably run afoul of something once player pressure has been applied. | |} ---- no, software design means that many things are interconnected and changing or adding one may affect another. I dont read anywhere that devs are saying its too hard to do the job. do you have any experience in software design at all or just equating it to your work? | |} ---- ---- I don't give a shit if it's complicated. People are paying for a service it should work properly I've played every MMO since everquest, this one isn't some special little child that get's to be excepted from criticism over bad performance | |} ---- QFT. If Dev's were perfect, we tech support people would have a lot less work to do. Call it "job security." | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Carbine won't win either way, the longer it takes for new content to be released the other side of that coin get's frustrated and annoyed comes to the forums and has a whinge and the "I quit" threads still keep being made. The issue isn't carbine they are doing the best they can better than any single person that posts on these forums. The issue is the shitty entitled stuck up retarded player base.. Flame me all you want.. you're still a shitty person online. | |} ---- Thank you for detailed information Virtue, it is very much appreciated and it made me happy yet again to be a part of Wildstar community. Our source code is branched in a similar fashion, obviously we don't use the same naming conventions but we follow this similar pattern: Dev (v4) - Staging (v3) - Testing (next build) - Release (current build) We do also have numerous "feature/" sub branches on them and before we merge feature branches with it's parent (let's say x feature in v4 development branch, we send it to a very small QA team focused on that version's features and tests. We do QA pass / reject iterations on a daily basis. Yes really, if a feature is rejected in the evening, next day's development is the very same feature again. Our "content drop" similar version releases depend on customer's need, but we do try to release a new build (not iterating version) of bugfixes monthly basis whenever we can. Our bugfixes happen in a seperate branch, and we use our own software to 'rebase' all other branches' current state to include all bug fixes that is relevant to that version. We're, obviously a small team compared to you guys :) so it's less likely to have conflicts, bugs or features that our QA misses but it -of course- still happens (A LOT to be honest) Like I said before, I admit game development (especially mmo scale...) is a different beast, and if standart software development is a "hill" mmo development is mount everest. Maybe it is because of the software's scale, I'm not really sure, but I still can't fully grasp the idea of "should've been fixed in this version's xyz commit / merge" style bugs can pop again. Like I said, it's probably related to scale of the team and software itself. Also, there are really amazing posters and answers in this thread, I wasn't expecting to be able to discuss this matter (which is -may sound strange- but very important to me) like this on forums. Don't get my OP wrong please, I've never said your development, QA, analyst or any other team is "amateur" or "incompetent" I was just searching for answers, and sort of thinking out loud. I'm quite sure Team Carbine is full of amazing people. This thread gave me insight on mmo-scale game development too, now I can start working on the next big thing a.k.a Wildstar killer! *goes to get hammer and nails* ^_^ | |} ---- lol, so you program for nuclear power plants? seriously. if you dont, can you with no doubt say that they dont have bugs? that they dont find mistakes after a software update? they cant afford mistakes, but unless you code for them can you honestly say... they...dont...happen? | |} ---- Nah not hire him, but maybe some blizzard employees. In my 8 years of WoW post Vanilla almost every update rolled out smooth and with little to no bugs as a result to an update. | |} ---- Your example is not really accurate on this matter I'm afraid. I do agree a software should release with minimum amount of bugs or bugs should be fixed in shorter times, but a 'nuclear plant' or 'traffic light' type software is not as "alive" as a game. A traffic light software probably won't need monthly content updates. Such software should only need regular "bug fix", maintenance branches in my opinion. Besides this, I agree with you on that last pharagraph. | |} ---- not sure what WoW you played but I am happy you remember a game you favour that way ^^ | |} ---- ---- I see where you're coming from, and understand your point, but, have you ever seen a "missing quest text" bug (for example) in WoW in a relatively new zone? (content) after a patch after that content's initial release? When talking about bugs, I mean those kind of bugs that makes you say "oh come on, how could you possibly break this" when you encounter them. :) | |} ---- "They're doing a better job at it than you could" is not a defense in the least it's just a poor attempt at evasion Most all of us aren't programmers, no shit they're doing a better job but it isn't any of our jobs to produce the game to begin with. It's like saying a damaged knife cuts better than a pristine spoon and then using that comparison to say the knife is doing a great job having patch notes saying they fixed path skill tiers after 2 months of being broken just to have them reverting back to base level again within the same day is some pretty shoddy work. Or the sheer amount of things they messed up on spellslinger in one fell swoop | |} ---- in wow? sadly yes lol | |} ---- I've read some hilarious things on these forums but this, this almost made me wee a little bit I laughed that hard. | |} ---- Seriously? Damn I mised that. I lost all my respect to big B. now lol :p | |} ---- no worries, I lost that long ago. pretty much in the round after round of nerfs to pve for their endless quest to make pvp "balanced" lol | |} ---- Oh my~ That explains a lot. The question is, why would anyone do such thing? Why can't you have just one "dev" environment, that everyone merges with, and another "stable" environment, that gets backported patches? Low standards — yes. Everything else — what's different? That. | |} ---- Let me tell you a story about a raid patch called Ahn'Qiraj. It started with probably the outright coolest patch launch ever. There was an epic questline (which would make the people griping about attunement right now shit their pants) to build a mallet. This was used to strike the gong that opened the gates to Ahn'Qiraj. After that, Horde and Alliance alike had gathered because the gates of Ahn'Qiraj could only be opened once, ever, on every server. I was there for the opening of Ahn'Qiraj on our server, and it was gorgeous. I was only getting like 15 FPS and I think we, at one or two points, crashed the server. But it was amazing. Then came the raids. Raiding was going relatively well. Yes, there were bugs and things had to be fixed, but I'm not hard on Blizz or Carbine for bugs existing. Very often, I'm fine with them no matter how big they get. To that point, the last boss of Ahn'Qiraj was C'thun, probably one of the straight-up best raid fights I've ever had the privilege to see. Especially at the time, it was cutting edge. Yeah, a little buggy sometimes, but not in any serious way... until the tentacle phase. Blizz had to put out a hotfix because C'thun would spawn tentacles you would need to kill before you wiped, and the tentacles were spawning in the wall. Nobody knew, they just thought, "Man, this boss is intensely hard, WTF is wrong? What are we doing wrong?" Turns out, they weren't doing anything wrong. The last boss of the most epic patch raid they'd ever dropped was bugged and, for all intents and purposes, unkillable. I'd never get on Blizz's case for that, even though it seems obvious. "How could they not know about that?" You'd be amazed what you can miss, no matter how hard you're looking. | |} ---- Only one dev branch means you have to merge all your bugfixes, features, content drops to that branch and in that case, frequent 'rebase' required by sub branches to keep up with all that merged fixes or changes. Imagine the conflicts that could happen while trying to merge drop 3 and suddenly a bugfix changed a big chunk of your original code... Nightmare... :D | |} ---- ---- Developing in style AND comfort. | |} ---- ---- This is all people need to know. | |} ---- | |} ---- Bahahahahahahaha *gasp* hahahahahahaha. You lost all credibility right there. Yes, it seems Carbine's patches contain a lot more undetected bugs than those of other developers, but that's what happens with new companies. Plus....they probably stick their interns on QA and testing. | |} ---- When you work for a security software company, you actually lose your job if you "revert" a feature unintentionaly with a patch, or, break a working feature in the same way. I couldn't care less how much credibility I have in your eyes... Do I need to go cry in a corner or what? Pft. | |} ---- how does any of that even relate at all to people using difference to muddy an argument? | |} ---- Sophmoric rhetoric at it's best. News flash; the software run in nuclear powerplants is basic as it gets; and it is still rather buggy. There are actual metrics for how bugged software is (usually in some iteration of the form X bugged lines of code per Y units of code). There is NO robust commercial grade software in which there are no bugs, period. This goes for MMO's, operating systems, systems control software for nuclear, energy grids, financial transactions, etc etc etc. MMO's are massive dynamic programs with a scale and complexity rivalled by only a few other classes of programs when raw scale, interactivity, and update requirements are considered. | |} ---- Fair point. A game will always be more organic. I probably didn't choose good examples. But I was trying to make a point - that the games industry gets itself into these situations precisely because it can. Not all industries are afforded this luxury. There's a very long history of games being pushed out early, with all manner of issues. The focus seems less on offering a quality, working, polished product and more on doing only as much as is necessary to get the product out the door, impress the reviewers (who rarely get beyond the starter areas of a game anyway) and try to get sufficient box sales to recoup costs. Then worry about player retention later. Trouble with this approach is everyone then wonders why players wander off after the first month or two. The 'content locust' syndrome doesn't really explain it. Most of those leaving probably haven't exhausted the content. They are more likely to have become exhausted by the bugs, performance issues and balancing problems (and the patching juggling act that tries to fix them) and just decided the game wasn't for them in its current state. So the players leave, hoping to return when it's all fixed. But it never really is, because the perceived correct way out of the situation is to keep churning out more content, which inevitably has lower and lower quality because of diminishing returns, reduced workforce, tighter deadlines etc. And so things tend to get worse. The better approach would be to be brave and suspend the content cycle for 2-3 months and get everyone on the team who possibly can onto bug fixing and testing (if they can't bug fix). Personally I would prepay a 3 month subscription now if they said that the next 3 months would be spent getting the existing game up to the quality they would have preferred it was in at launch (but couldn't because of meeting deadlines). | |} ---- ---- ROFL!!!! God, I'm sorry, I quoted the wrong post. I was trying to respond to the quote above yours. This one. I need to go to sleep. I was seriously looking around like, "I... I don't know what that has to do with that." I apologize. | |} ---- You guys are the ones saying "how hard can it be" and a Carbine has clearly stated why their can be issues, yet you still *cupcake*ing say "omg that's bullshit it doesn't/shouldn't work that way cause I know a guy who works on these shitty iphone apps that *cupcake*ing suck ass and he says it doesn't work that way." So your defense about my response is the biggest load of hypocrite crap you could ever spout... Left hand needs to meet right hand yo cause clearly they have no idea what they are each *cupcake*ing doing at the moment. | |} ---- ---- I sat next to a guy who used to write s/w for airbag controllers. The same held true there, only when they messed up, people died. That still didn't stop them from releasing s/w with bugs. "NEVER" is the only word you posted I have a problem with. | |} ---- ---- I never said anything like that, now your just straight up lying to try and win. I said I don't care how difficult it is, a professional does what it takes to get it right They aren't even fixing bugs specifically stated in the patch notes as fixed as well as introducing a whole slew of new ones They have a ton of issues that aren't even bugs like all the gear that is itemized for non-existent classes or for classes that had base stats shifted way back in closed beta yet they never changed the items to match. They had a department lead pretty much admit on a live stream that the various design teams don't even interact with each other | |} ---- Absolute statements, all the kids are making them these days. | |} ---- Yes, but it's not like there is an alternative. You port the bugfix to your branch and try to merge again. In the end, you'll have to merge your "drop 3" and "sudden bugfix" anyway (but only once if you have a single dev environment). Oh wait, you won't! And you'll end up with reverts and lost and delayed bugfixes that we currently see in WS. I've never touched any software run in nuclear power plants. And I have no idea how buggy it is. Although this is a thread about WS development, would you please name the software you are talking about and refer me to the bugginess measurements performed on it? While you are at it, please, look up "sophomoric" in a dictionary. Here's another word for you to look up: "delirious". | |} ---- I said you guys,,, plural..it the term was used because that's how a lot of people are acting in here and you are agreeing with them..you know the old guilty by association.. bottom line you know nothing about programming on this scale and neither does anyone else here.. so until you do how about shutting up and let carbine fix the shit in peace.. whiney brats. | |} ---- So i'm like that because you say I am? Your quite the moron aren't you? It's not the customer's responsibility to know how to do the job. It's the customer's responsibility to want it done well when carbine releases a patch where they at the very least fix the things they actually claimed they fixed I'll consider not criticizing their performance as harshly | |} ---- Don't like it leave.. that simple. no one is forcing you to play the game. Maybe accept some personal responsibility here yeah ? or did your parents not teach you about that. | |} ---- This right here is why we have threads complaining about needing server merges and such; shooing people who criticize the game away accomplishes nothing. So for those of us who can't even really play the game, should we just leave? My spellslinger's healing abilities are so busted from this patch, that I couldn't even heal effectively. I should just throw in the towel and saw screw it? I'm already giving up on playing until it's fixed, isn't that a little messed up? It's a product that people paid for, and in certain cases people can't play. Expecting bugs that break an entire class (AKA spellslingers) to not make it to release is not unreasonable. | |} ---- personal responsibility for a game not working as advertised? do you even understand the things you say? | |} ---- Software *design* is about designing software where coupling(dependencies between components that should be independent) is kept to a minimum. In a well designed system changing something generally only affects things directly related to it, or if they affect farther things, it's via a chain effect. That's not to say that it's easy, it isn't, but when things are breaking unrelated things that's a sign of a poor design. Another thing that's common in others but less so in mmo's is unit testing. Testing that all systems work as you expect them to. This is a lot harder for some parts, but it should be absolutely possible to automatically test many of the systems. At least it is if coupling is minimized and systems are compartmentalized. Game programming is kind of the wild west of programming: it's a more creative enterprise so it's quite common for people to play fast and loose with these rules.Tbh, these rules are boring as hell, but they're what keeps the madness at bay when doing complex integrations. And regardless of the above one thing is sure: for a monthly patch at the very least, there should be a bunch of people giving a once over of all the primary systems: check each ability is working as planned. The issues mentioned in the original post should have been caught. The servers dying due to circumstances that couldn't be tested? That's not so easy and can be forgiven, but stuff like the stealth and wild barrage are pretty obvious and should've been easily caught. This wasn't a hotfix, it was a monthly fix which should have had a decent amount of testing | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Hit the nail 100%. This whole business in general needs a good kick in the butt. | |} ---- ---- Chua having a personality dissorder or something? I can moan and whine to my hearts content because I've paid for this product/service. Simple as that. I'm off.... Craving for a Chua burger with bacon. | |} ---- Silly Human. Paid for access to server and lease to use said product. Maybe should read EULA more closely..... But is okay, Chua understand entitlement. | |} ---- They like using old code when they patch. So stuff that gets fixed in A gets unfixed in B and re-fixed in C but un-fixed in D and so on. | |} ---- Can you provide screenshots and detailed notes of all the testing you did yourself on the PTR, I mean most of these patches were on the PTR before release presumably with the same bugs. Just send me all the notes you took and copies of all the bug reports you submitted while you were on the PTR testing. You were the last line of defense for the bugs, I blame you for patches being released with bugs, I mean since we're playing the blame game and all. | |} ---- I see this stance all over the place in regards to games that allow for PTR testing or similar features. And boy does it reek of bullshit. Let's use an analogy. A train station is opening up nearby my house and they're inviting a few guests to come see it before it's finished. But wait! For some reason, several of the rails are malformed and would derail a train. It slips by my notice. When the station is opened, the unnoticed and untested problem actually derails a train. Am I to be blamed for their engineering failure? It's the same deal in games as a whole and in this situation Wildstar. Blaming other customers for what the company should be doing is incredibly absurd. Would you blame nearby patrons if your food at a restaurant was poor? Or would you blame the people that actually made the food and sold it to you? P.S. A shitload of the bugs on live currently WERE reported on the PTR. I know a multitude of the Spellslinger bugs were reported, and yes, I was one of them. Carbine did not address them. Still blaming me? | |} ---- Except cannot compare situations, as complexity, development cycles and rules are different. Chua think is even absurd to treat everything same or comb over same side. Simply does not work. More complex a system, more easier to break. | |} ---- So I guess Carbine is beyond reproach and it's all those damn PTR testers fault then. I mean, they only reported the bugs, they didn't actually code the game to fix them as well, those lazy gits. I mean, Carbine's paying them for all this work they're expected, why aren't they doing a better job? Oh, right, they're not paid employees. It's sad your singleminded Chua intellect cannot compare two systems for the purpose of an analogy. | |} ---- LOL, I knew if I read beyond this point the rage would be delicious. Thanks for not letting me down. | |} ---- Chua sad Human cannot understand concept of complexity and needs to resort to insults to make point. Chua try one more time. Chua often forget Human not think as fast as Chua: Software, Games in particular, are complex A QA Team can only test so much. Adding more QA/Testers does not solve issue. Is impossible to cover all bases. Software has bad habit of breaking somewhere when introducing new feature Certain parts unable to be tested by a QA team. Example : Class Balance and PvP Just because bug reported does not mean can be fixed easy: Needs investigation, research, testing and deploying. All have priority, just something more important then others. If Chua was too fast, then ask and Chua try explaining again. | |} ---- What you're typing doesn't actually match what's happening. Every patch, or even hotfix, is a guessing game as to how many broken systems were introduced into the game. According to your points, this game is so complex that it is impossible to cover all bases (and pvp is untestable :rolleyes:). We'll call it a fair assumption. But nobody is harping about one single bug in these patches; there are absolutely loads of them. It's to the point that when I see patch notes, I have to go into the game and verify if the game has actually changed to how they've said it has. Oftentimes, it has not or has changed in a completely different way. But all that said, Wildstar does not exist in a vacuum and is not the most complex piece of code to ever be assmbled. Now, I'm going to try another one of these comparisons. I know you had difficulty with the last one, so I'll try to take this one real slow. For this example, I am going to compare two video games. One is Wildstar, the game we are talking about. The other is a video game in the same genre as Wildstar, a game called World of Warcraft. It is currently the largest market share for the MMO genre; it's the staple. It is the product that consumers are going to be comparing your product to if you release in the same genre, like any product or service where there's not a monopoly. Still following? Do you see how these could be considered similar this time around? Both of these games release content updates or smaller bugfixing updates. But, World of Warcraft's releases are typically rock-solid and any bugs that crop up are fixed within moments, oftentimes a mere hour after the bug being found depending on its severity. Something like a skill hitting an area 18x larger (see: Wild Barrage) than it's supposed to, would be fixed immediately, if it even made it into the game. Having the UI not show cooldowns properly (see: all Spellslinger abilities after using Quick Draw with Trigger Fingers) would be considered unplayable by the majority of the playerbase, since they have much higher standards. I cannot recall a point in WoW's history where a similar bug has made it into the game, but if it had, I know it would have been patched the day of. In Wildstar, releases are greeted with patch notes that have been copy and pasted from previous patches, leaving the user to weed out which changes are actually new. The new patch notes themselves are so unreliable that you have to test them ingame to verify they've actually changed; as many times they have not or have changed in a completely different way. The really exciting stuff happens when you begin scraping the surface for the loads of bugs that were introduced. Examples: Repair all not working, Mordechai Redmoon exploits being fixed when they weren't, Nanofield functionality being changed frequently, decor items no longer able to be used outside of housing, Vitality Burst never really working as it's supposed to at C1, etc. You then have to wonder when these will actually be patched. In the case of Repair All, I think it was about a week. In Mordechai's case, players were still cheesing him prior to yesterday's patch (and possibly now, but I have not run Skullcano since Sabotage). So, one of these games has much more reliable patches than another, despite these games both being complex or software having the habit of breaking. This would lead us to the idea that these factors can be mitigated if not controlled and that Wildstar is not doing as well as competitors in this area. According to your points, more QA/testers does not solve the issue. So, then the only systems in place responsible for the huge gap in stability between these two games would be either the architecture of the devcycle (4+ coding environments being worked on simultaneously) or those that are working within that cycle. In the end it doesn't matter which it is, because the end result is all that matters for the consumer. The result is that Wildstar's patches up until this point have been amateur hour and they need to be improved. Hence, this thread. | |} ---- Pretty much summed it up for me there, thanks. I'm amazed how many people here like to flame and misunderstand everything. My original post was not a "whine" or "rage" or "I'm mad, will quit this game" type of post. I posted this thread because simply I wondered how their development pipeline worked, and why would those bugs happen. I'm still saying the same thing: Some bugs are rather 'silly' compared to other, meaningful bugs - like server crashes, did I mention that bug ever like it was a problem? - are not our subject. We're talking about bugs that should've been caught by QA, developer itself, beta testers, PTR testers or even the janitor in the office... Grow some sense please, I get it, heck I KNOW it is a computer software and bugs happen, they always will. But some things should've fixed before the release. With your mentality, we should totally be ok when we find that our anti virus software decided to 'expand' it's threat list and deleted all our personal folders, even OS specific files after a patch. Or we should totally be ok if all of the status (be it error, success, info or warning) messages of the OS has vanished after an update. Because, you know OS is a complex piece of software and bugs are allowed to happen right? Even if it means you can't use that OS until it gets fixed... Please -at least- try to think logical. | |} ---- I enjoyed reading this post as I pretty much share the same opinion. Maybe now our little Chua will be able to understand what you meant before. You really have to take it slow with some people. | |} ---- EULAlalolo's my ass. It's the same old sheit we've been hearing for the past 20 odd years from people in quasi funny T-shirts and grey suits alike It doesn't matter how complex a game is. It should be balanced, bug free and play as advertised once it's offered to the consumer. Pay upfront, patch it up while breaking other things, all this over a stretch of say 6-8 months before it's the game we all want to play, should be forbidden by law ffs. Guess Chua got same T-shirt as developdude. | |} ---- ---- lol bug free software...lol did we miss the whole windows vista thing?...windows me....windows 8...etc etc. Now..would it be nice if that were the way it was of course. But its never going to be that way. Nothing made by man will ever be flawless 100% | |} ---- To round it up you post a half page trying to explain why things go the way they are going currently. That might impress and please the people that never worked in the gaming industry but for me and a lot of other people this is just an excuse. Hope that changes in the near future because this game actually has potential if you guys get your act together. With that said, I will take the warning points again because I know the truth hurts and is hard to handle at times but I think some people need to stand up and tell you guys that this is just not the way things should be running. Actions speak louder than words, it's time to impress us with a game that actually works instead of sitting here waiting for the pitty party to start. | |} ---- ---- you were almost doing okay up to this point. short term memory is my guess. in recent memory, patch 5.4 that dropped Timeless Isle in. September 10 2013. patches and fixes occurred nearly daily for the rest of September. in fact, almost every couple days for the next several months. yes, thats quite rock solid. | |} ---- Thats why I said this industry needs to blow itself up earlier in this thread. It's one big shady pile of poo generating more piles of poo each and every month. Most consumers have accepted digital products for what they are, uncomplete and bug ridden. I simply can't fathom why one should accept this And it's getting worse everyday. | |} ---- Chua recommend not to forget bug at launch that allowed player to kill entire city using console commands. Or game not playable because airships not spawned. Oh let's not forget bosses resetting in raids. Oh did Chua mention Farm crops dissapearing? Or dragon not attackable? Chua maybe forgot quests not spawning.... | |} ---- lol...dude you need to relax you will give yourself a heart attack. Its every industry. Everything has issues you name it something is wrong with it. From the food you eat to the car you drive. Unless you go off and live like a mountain man you are pretty much screwed. Its not about making a product its about how bad can we make it but still make money off of it. Now not every company is like that but ya its a much bigger issue than some game. | |} ---- It sounds like you had an unfavorable experience with a lot of these things happening, am I correct? Identical and worse issues exist in Wildstar and they're not being as fixed as quickly, to boot. | |} ---- General Motors wants word with Human about recalled cars Toyota wants word about speeding Prius | |} ---- Funny thing, Chua encountered none of these. Chua leveled to 50 without problems. Chua now found issues with few vet-adventures and dungeons, and quest text not fully visible here and there. Guess what, Chua find way around is having fun. | |} ---- or the loot bug that went on and on | |} ---- ---- Chua think depend on branch strategy. Often keep release versions in separate branch, and still apply hotfix on them. Thus can break something. | |} ---- apparently at carbine every branch releases something and the other branch is not aware of what just happened. You and me have a different understanding of mainline and how products are being released or shared by departments/branches. It seems to me that at the moment one department blames the other and devs running all over the forum or livestream trying to fix what the other person just typed. It makes no sense lol. | |} ---- I work as a senior project manager at large insurance software development shop. I can assure you that what I do, or what you do, is nowhere near the size or complexity of what Carbine is doing. The need to have... maybe 20+ teams working simultaneously not only on content but functionality, and then trying to QA against whichever parts were able to hop on the train in time, to uphold a 30 day release cycle? This is a beast like you can't comprehend. It's complex, and they do their best. But ultimately, even with the best software and systems to manage it, they are still human. | |} ---- You could make the exact same argument as a WoW fanboy. Here's your post as some Tauren-identifying player in the WoW world, criticizing Wildstar: Tauren recommend not to forget bug at launch that allowed players to kill entire city by ignoring cooldown of charged shot. Or game not playable because optimization not completed. Oh let's not forget bosses resetting in adventures, dungeons, world bosses, and raids. Oh did Tauren mention gear, gold, quest completion, housing items, and garden crops disappearing? Or stemdragons not attackable? Tauren maybe forgot quests bugged or not firing correctly.... Funny thing, Tauren encountered none of these. Tauren leveled to 90 without problems. Tauren now found rare issues with quest grammar or minor class imbalance. Guess what, Tauren find way around is having fun. | |} ---- Not always. And on a project this size, I can only imagine that becomes less true. | |} ----